What’s Up with McQueary Now?

Late Tuesday night, The Morning Callreported that it had unearthed an email that former assistant coach Mike McQueary had sent to former teammates in which he stated that he had made sure the alleged sexual assault by Jerry Sandusky of a 10 year-old boy that he witnessed was stopped and, furthermore, that he actually did discuss the matter with the police. This was the second email from McQuery that has surfaced as the media have inundated Happy Valley. I reported on the earlier one here.

McQueary has been ripped to shreds by the media, by bloggists, and by members of the public wanting to go on record as being macho men for his having done nothing at the time of the alleged attack, and for his failure to ever follow up with the police. He is on administrative leave now and presumably, is in seclusion.

Was McQueary trying with this email to set the record straight with former teammates so they would not think of him as a coward? If that was the intent of the email and it turns out to be a true representation of what actually happened, then McQueary certainly told a different story to the grand jury. The grand jury presentment contained no information about “the graduate assistant” (who turned out to be McQueary) stopping the alleged assault or discussing it with the police. In fact, it states that he “left immediately” upon witnessing the incident.

I suppose that McQueary didn’t consider that there is no such thing as privacy on the internet. Certainly not if he used the email system at Penn State to send these messages. They become public records; as such, the media can request copies of them.

McQueary wrote that he “did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police” following the alleged incident. McQueary also wrote that he “is getting hammered for handling this the right way or what I thought at the time was right.”

“I had to make tough impacting quick decisions,” he wrote.

So McQueary is either lying to his former teammates or he committed some grave sins of omission when he testified to the grand jury. There is another possibility, of course. A sloppy editing job on the grand jury presentment could have elided some of McQueary’s testimony, either deliberately or unwittingly.

In the email obtained by The Morning Call, dated Nov. 8, McQueary said, “I did stop it, not physically, but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room.”

That seems pretty nebulous to this Turkey. Even if McQueary yelled “stop”, how did he “make sure”? If he was that concerned about it and he had revealed himself to Sandusky and the boy, why did he not tell the boy to get some clothes on and come with him?

“No one can imagine my thoughts or wants to be in my shoes for those 30-45 seconds,” McQueary wrote. “Trust me.”

As I’ve written before, I agree with the notion that nobody can say what they would do unless they were actually there in that situation with the same collateral issues as McQueary. (Again, I’m not defending him, so kindly use your excess testosterone on your girlfriend or wife, not me.)

With all these loose, frayed ends hanging around it continues to look as if it’ll be a long time, if ever, before the whole truth is known to us. Perhaps someone should suggest to McQueary that he submit to a polygraph examination. Just sayin’.

Comments

In my experience, simply reporting allegations of sexual misconduct with children to police is insufficient to make them react in a meaningful way. One close friend went through this recently when her child was undressed in the middle of the night during a sleepover at a friend’s home. The police had no intentions of charging (or investigating) the creepy uncle, until the mom pushed hard. Then it was determined that the guy had been convicted of sex charges with a minor and served time in another state. I can easily see how McQueary may have reported the incident and the report was not taken seriously and not even any records kept of it.
McQueary is not a suspect in a crime. There is no reason for him to submit to a polygraph.

McQueary is a mess of inconsistencies, but that’s what happens when one is a slave to several masters.

Can police reports get lost? Hell, yeah! We know how the 1998 stuff languished and got moldy. So, yes, we cannot even rely on the police denials with regard to McQueary.

McQueary is the only eyewitness who will testify to Sandusky’s alleged crime. No, he hasn’t committed a chargeable crime himself, but his credibility will surely be on trial when he testifies in court. Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s defense attorney, has already laid the groundwork — with McQueary’s unwitting assistance — for impeaching McQueary’s testimony.

My suggestion that McQueary submit to a polygraph was somewhat facetious, borne of my frustration with his declining value as a material witness.

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